[3rd CfP (extended deadline] - OSS2025 @JOWO2025 September 8-12, 2025, in Catania, Italy

[Bart Gajderowicz]

(apologies for cross-posting)

The 3rd International Workshop on Ontologies for Services and Social-good (OSS2025)

Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO) 2025. The workshop will be held on September 8-12, 2025, in Catania, Italy, in conjunction with the 5th International Conference On Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2025). 

https://csse.utoronto.ca/oss2025

*WORKSHOP SCOPE AND AIM*

Semantic Technologies provide a formal way to represent knowledge in ways that are interpretable by computers and to store, integrate, and query information semantically. They have become increasingly important in the service of humanity over the past decade. Their growing integration into society offers exciting opportunities to address complex problems. 

The OSS2025 workshop aims to foster communication and interdisciplinary collaboration at the intersection of semantic technologies, service provisioning, and social good. Researchers across various AI fields are invited to submit theoretical contributions, novel algorithms, and tools related to service provisioning and social good. Practitioners from society-focused domains are encouraged to share experiences, best practices, and insights on applying semantic-enabled technologies.

*IMPORTANT DATES*

Submission date (extended): June 8, 2025

Notification date: July 14, 2025

Late breaking posters: August 1, 2025

Camera ready: September 1, 2025​

Workshop date: September 8-9, 2025

 

*TOPICS OF INTEREST*

Ontology and Semantic Modeling

- New ontologies and semantic data models for services (see guidelines: https://content.iospress.com/download/applied-ontology/ao200227?id=applied-ontology%2Fao200227)

- Ontology development for societal services using foundational ontologies (DOLCE, BFO, UFO, SUMO, FOAF, GoodRelations)

- Human Resource-related ontologies

- Representation of service governance (accountability, responsibility, trust, cooperation, competition)

- Representations of vagueness, ambiguity, and belief

- Ontology validation (theory and engineering practice)

 

Models for Assessment, Analysis, and Social Outcomes

- Models for system assessment and analysis, including policy evaluation, economic analysis, impact models, and Social Return on Investment (SROI)

- Models for service client outcome assessment, including risk assessment and conflict resolution

- Models of stakeholder goals, needs, and roles (e.g., belief-desires-intentions, UNSDG Goals, service providers, funders, socioeconomic determinants)

- Models of society and human services, covering service provisioning, process modeling, economic/funding structures, sustainability, and client agency

- Social Change Theory, incorporating ontologies of practitioner paradigms, educational material, practice, behavior theory, and cognitive theory

 

Knowledge, Data, and Decision Support

- Knowledge acquisition methods, such as ontology learning, natural language processing, service plan extraction/optimization, and leveraging Large language models

- Knowledge-based Decision Support Systems (e.g., recommender systems, information retrieval)

- Data management, semantic data integration, and knowledge graphs

- Knowledge management

- Governance of data models for societal data sets and adherence to FAIR use principles

 

Industry Applications and Cross-Disciplinary Research

- Industry applications and case studies, including Linked Data, Semantic Web, Knowledge Graphs, lessons learned, and best practices

- Cross-disciplinary research in sociology, service provisioning, public services, public health, government services, urban planning, the judicial system, and community engagement

*ORGANISING COMMITTEE*

- Bart Gajderowicz, University of Toronto, Canada

- Daniela Rosu, University of Toronto, Canada

- Janna Hastings, University of Zurich, University of St. Gallen

- Jacqueline Csonka-Peeren, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada